Russia Hacked All US State Election Systems

The US Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that election systems in all 50 states were focused by hackers linked to the Russian government, according to their significantly edited Report which was recently published. 

US President Donald Trump's recent claim that he was "totally exonerated" by special counsel Robert Mueller was rejected by Mr Mueller at a hearing in DC on Wednesday 24th July. Mueller concluded that Russia had interfered in the election with the intention of benefitting Mr Trump's campaign.

He also said he had not exonerated Mr Trump of obstruction of justice and now some are claiming Trump should be impeached. The former FBI director spent two years probing alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, but did not establish collusion in a crime. In 2017, it was claimed that 39 States, and the Department of Homeland Security officially admitted that 21 States, had been targeted later that year. 

It was only this April that a joint report from the FBI and DHS indicated that Russian hackers may have tried to probe every single US state’s election infrastructure for flaws.

Because the relevant sections of the Report are edited out, it’s not clear how sure the Senate Intelligence Committee is that Russia probed every state, or what the evidence might be. But it does say that some unnamed intelligence gathered in 2018 backed up earlier assumptions by National Security Council cyber coordinator Michael Daniel, and the DHS, that every state was hacked.

The report says that Russia could have actually tampered with election systems if it wanted to. “Russian cyber actors were in a position to delete or change voter data,” the report reads.  

According to this document, the US government still doesn’t have any proof that Russia actually did tamper with any voter data, nor is there proof that hackers accessed actual voting machines. Russian hackers appear to have focused on voter registration systems and databases. 

But that doesn’t mean that the voting machines weren’t also targeted and the Mueller report suggests that the voting machine companies were also probably infiltrated by Russia’s GRU.

BBC:        The Verge:        NBC:         Senate.gov: 

You Might Also Read:

Countering Electoral Interference:

US Intelligence Has The Evidence That Proves Russian Presidential Election Interference: